Friday, March 3

Aliyev's mask is finally off

It just keeps getting better and better. After appointing his wife as VP, intimidating family members of dissident activists living abroad, president Aliyev's minions go after popular video blogger, author of numerous videos critical of the government and its officials of their lavish life styles. Court in Baku sentenced Mehman Huseynov to two years on charges of slander.

This is important. Huseynov is the first journalist/blogger to be openly sentenced for slander. So the mask is finally off for president Aliyev. No need for cover ups and camouflages. And why should he be hiding anymore anyway. He has changed the constitution, secured presidency for life, violated every single possible human rights convention Azerbaijan signed up to and got away with it, made his wife his vice president.

Mehman's sentence means that the government in Azerbaijan no longer needs to hide its true colors; that more arrests will follow [not that there were many independent voices left anyway] and that we have successfully transitioned to being banana republic (not that we were too far from becoming one).

I think someone should tell one of Aliyev's minions they should add that description into one of Aliyev's speeches where he boasts about democracy, freedoms, modernism and so on. "In addition to many strengths of our country, we have also successfully built a banana republic".

***Updated
Also today, court extended pre-trial detention period of Faig Amirli, finance director at opposition Azadliq newspaper by three months;
Another court extended pre-trial detention of political activist Fuad Ahmadli by three months;
And yet another court extended pre-trial detention of another journalist Elchin Ismayilli until June;

1 comment:

Welcome to Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines. I started this blog in 2008.

Flying Carpets is about Azerbaijan (where I am originally from) and a little bit about Turkey (where I live). Flying Carpets its mostly politics, and rights issues that I deeply care about and want to see change some day.

I hope it offers at least a tiny bit of glimpse into a country that has so much potential and yet wasting it all thanks to its leaders.